I am looking into building an entry level workstation speced machine that can also work well with media and casual gaming. It has to run CAD/CAM well so I figured the Firepro v4900 would be a nice graphics card for it. I would of liked to get a Firepro v320 but can't seem to find any on sale so I'm wondering if the AMD A10-5800K would make a good substitute to unload GPU onto the Firepro v4900.

Can the A10 function in a similar ***** in relation to the Firepro V4900 as it does with the Radeon 6770 HD? And importantly does this form of Hybrid Crossfire bring the same CAD/CAM optimization that AMD pledges to deliver with the Firepro A320/v4900 combination?

CAD programs are not too demanding, but when you get into 3D the VRAM requirements can grow quickly.

The top card, the HD7970 has eased down in price of late and it features 3 GB of VRAM which is helpful for 3D Studio etc

 

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Corsair Carbide 300R, TX850V2, Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0, Phenom II 965 C3 BE, G.SKILL RipjawsX DDR3-2133 8 GB, GTX 260 SLI, Asus PA238QR, Windows 7 x64 Enterprise

Asus M4A77D, Athlon64 X2 4200+, DDR2-800 6 GB, HD 5450, cheap 450W, Server 2012

So would it be just the same reliability (crashes during rendering) if I buy a Radeon 6770 HD with GDDR 5? Both cards (Radeon 6770 and Firepro V4900) I'm looking at have 1Gb of 128bit GDDR 5 VRAM.

No you can't crossfire a Fire series card with an APU.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

So if thats the case would a A10 Radeon 6770 Crossfire be about as reliable for CAD/CAM as a Firepro A320 v4900 combination?

I'm aware of optimization for work applications in the Firepro hardware and firmware. Does anyone know where I can buy a Firepro A320?

Edited: 11/22/2012 at 11:04 PM by divedr12351

Even if you could setup crossfire this way, you probably wouldn't want to.  Hybrid crossfire is proving to be one of those things which works much better on paper than it does in reality.

Don't get me wrong, it often will improve performance more than using only one or the other, but from what I've seen here from various people... that comes at quite a cost.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
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Troll Hunter

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Agreed, Hybrid Crossfire was alright when HTPC class graphics cards were anemically weak (and it wasn't that alright back then), and the current iteration "Dual Graphics" isn't without its issues either, and with all multiple GPU systems there are unique problems compared to a single GPU setup, such as microstuttering and non linear scaling.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

You need to decide which is more important... gaming or CAD/CAM.  You won't get the benefits of CAD-specific improvement to the drivers if you go with a Radeon, and you run the risk of being in somewhat unknown territory if you game on a Pro card.  If CAD is a must-have, then I'd probably get a Pro card, and take my chances on weirdness when gaming.  The hardware is mostly the same, it's just the drivers that are different.

Unfortunately, a lot of advertising won't turn a bad idea into a good one.  Integrated graphics have come a long way in recent years, but it still can't match the performance of a discrete card.  On top of that there's the fact that AMDs "APUs" have so far always had a good GPU and a relatively weak CPU.  If you need that extra performance of a discrete card(and it sounds like you probably do), then you're probably better off getting a "normal" CPU, and one good video card.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Post Count: +8510
Troll Hunter

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

Edited: 11/26/2012 at 06:43 PM by Mime